The Polish version of
‘Your Rights in Northern Ireland: a Guide for
Migrant Workers’
(2011) is now in print. It is being
distributed through Northern Ireland Housing
Executive, Polish Association and other voluntary
organisations working with migrant workers.

We have produced a multi-lingual poster to advertise the
new online versions. A copy will be sent to all
our member organisations. If you would like extra
copies of the poster to distribute from your
premises or in your local area, please contact our
publications officer:
catherine.couvert@lawcentreni.org

We would like to thank the Northern Ireland Human Rights
Commission who published the guides jointly with
the Law Centre. Special thanks are also due to
the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First
Minister, Northern Ireland Strategic Migration
Partnership and Belfast City Council who provided
funds for the translations and to print the Polish
version.

The role of pro bono
work

On 1 March this year,Mr
Justice Stephens(above)
spoke at the launch of the Law Centre’s Legal
Support Project on the importance of pro-bono work.

The Law Centre responded to a Department of
Justice consultation paper on amending the law to
introduce new human trafficking offences.

We welcomed this development which implements the
UK's obligations under the European Union's
Trafficking Convention.

Asylum victory

We successfully challenged the refusal of the Secretary of State
to allow an Iranian national’s fresh claim for
asylum. The court found that unless the new
evidence presented in a fresh claim for asylum is
unfounded, it is the role of the immigration judge
to determine whether the asylum case has a
‘realistic prospect of success,’ not the Secretary
of State.

This is a victory for ensuring that the highest
standards of law are upheld and not subject to the
discretionary powers of the Secretary of State. It
should have a positive impact on securing the human
rights of asylum seekers.

Tax credit arrears for
self-employed client

We recently obtained more than £10,000 arrears of
tax credits for a client who had given up hope of
resolving the dispute when she contacted the Law
Centre.

Our client phoned Tax Credits Helpline in October 2010 to tell
them that she was leaving employment and becoming
self employed. Despite countless phone calls to
HMRC over the course of the next year she did not
receive any decisions or information from HMRC.

In October 2011 she was informed that the claim had been disallowed
after her first call a year before. She was
told that she should make a fresh
claim but that this could only be backdated for
three months.

We sent a Pre-action Protocol letter to HMRC and asked for an
extra statutory payment to compensate our client for
her loss due to the Revenue’s failure to comply with
statutory decision making procedures. She was
delighted when HMRC settled the case and
fully backdated tax credits for the period.